Opening an artist-led contemporary gallery space during a global pandemic in rural Devon doesn’t sound like a good idea on paper, but one year in it feels like one of the best decisions I have ever made.
In March 2020, I visited Malaysia to discuss plans for an ambitious, collaborative project with a Malaysian artist, Lee Mok Yee, which would include touring an exhibition across the UK and South East Asia. It was a project that we’d been discussing for some years, but it had finally started to pick up momentum as we visited studios across Malaysia and began to book in meetings with some bigger galleries back at home. Then COVID hit and after unplanned visits to Thailand and Oman, I ended up on an emergency flight back to Britain as the government advised that all Brits abroad should return home.
Stuck at home without access to my studio, I saw the fruits of our research trip steadily dry up, the galleries we had been in touch with about our project were no longer interested, and applications I had submitted for various opportunities were postponed or cancelled, citing uncertainty, inability to travel or lack of resources.
Faced with a now empty calendar, I did what most other artists did at the time; read, thought, made much smaller work than I usually do, and emailed people that were probably furloughed and would never reply. Micro commissions, the Artist Support Pledge and a flurry of emergency funding for artists kept me afloat, until I ultimately ended up returning to an old job in a surf shop once tourists started to reappear.
I live in Braunton, North Devon, a coastal holiday destination, best known for its popular surf beaches of Saunton, Croyde and Woolacombe. It’s busy in the summer, and quiet in the winter, and the outdoors-y lifestyle, cycle routes and waves are what have been drawing more and more people to the area gradually over the years.
Having studied art in London, the rural lifestyle is something I had to adjust to, and my own practice relied on travelling to more cultural locations to see cutting edge art, exhibit my own work and take part in residencies. Sometimes it was a short two and a half hours to Plymouth, or three hours to Bristol, but other times I was travelling well over 200 miles to London, Kent or Leeds.
We have some historic arts venues in the region that are brilliant. There’s Barnstaple Museum and Beaford Arts, both with a strong focus on heritage, and there’s the hidden gem of Broomhill – a sculpture garden and art hotel, whose National Sculpture Prize, set up by Rinus and Aniet Van De Sande, I was lucky enough to be a part of in 2016. In Torridge, just South of North Devon, there’s The Burton Art Gallery, a national portfolio organisation with its own museum, impressive archival pottery collection, and fantastic outreach provision, and also The Plough Arts Centre, which encompasses theatre, film and art, and with whom I had a solo exhibition at the beginning of 2019 (and of which I’m now a trustee!)
However, the large village of Braunton (arguably one of the largest villages in the UK) where I live, and the neighbouring villages, had no accessible contemporary space that encompassed community, creativity, and networking with an artist-centric approach. A lot of the local art scene is heavily dictated by the seaside, commercial art galleries and shops that sell pictures of waves and surfers – great for tourists, but not always for artists wanting meaningful conversations about art and culture.
In spring 2020, local artist and film-maker Richard Gregory made the decision to transform his large industrial unit at the back of Tesco into a ‘white cube’ space, the idea of which came to him on a bike ride with his son during lockdown, where he realised, he wanted to bring together his two long-standing loves: art and community.
I met with Richard, and he expressed his need for a partner on the project, and we quickly realised that our vision for the future of art in North Devon was very much aligned – wanting an intergenerational approach that encompassed all aspects of our multi-faceted arts needs for local practitioners, whilst bringing exciting art to our doorstep.
Being a not-for-profit community interest company was also important to us, as we didn’t want the commercialisation of art to drive the sort of work that we showed. We were interested in a diverse arts programme that explored different identities and experiences of people in the South West and across the UK more broadly, and addressed a number of contemporary themes that we felt were new to the area.
We also wanted the space to be accessible; open to groups and artists who were still finding their feet when it came to their own practice. Very quickly we began working with North Devon Arts, an open, informal arts networking group that had been running in the area since 1998 and was set up to connect artists across dispersed communities of Northern Devon. Their membership of career and hobbyist artists had an annual Christmas exhibition once a year, and they quickly asked to host their 2020 show with us, which we felt was the perfect way to welcome our local arts community.
A few weeks before we were due to welcome our next artist, Chris Alton, who had grown up in the area, and whose anti-fascist, pro-disco art activism movement ‘English Disco Lovers’ had received widespread press coverage back in 2014, another national lockdown was declared.
Thanks to Richard’s career in photography and videography as well as the kind and generous support of our neighbours, we were able to launch our first virtual exhibition instead; a brand-new collection of works by local painter and arts leader, Peter Stiles, whose paintings explore childhood narratives and place. The ability to open an art exhibition to, not just our immediate community, but to a whole world of visitors, made us aware that our activities could be projected further than our remote location.
The first eight months relied on us working in a voluntary capacity. We raised funds by making the space available to hire for small-scale group activities between lockdowns and selling some of the smaller works exhibited, which enabled us to pay for our website, signage, vinyl and postcards. When we were able to open we made sure we were collecting data in the form of participation numbers and feedback from visitor surveys, and we then used this information to make an Arts Council England National Lottery project grant application – and we were successful.
In June 2021 we were awarded just under £29,000 in Arts Council England National Lottery funding, which is now helping us to deliver our pilot programme. In the past year, we have hosted eight free workshops for children in the summer holidays, exhibited 150 Year 7 students from our local school (many of whom hadn’t had a chance to visit a contemporary art space, let alone exhibit in one), we’ve hosted nine virtual exhibitions, as well as eight physical ones, and our programme of classes and events continues to grow.
Our audience continues to expand, change, mix, and discuss, as each one of our exhibitions brings new ideas and new perspectives. We are definitely still going through a period of trial and error, in order to understand how we can best serve our community and champion creativity in a rural location like North Devon, and sometimes it feels frustrating when things don’t work or don’t go as planned. But I think it’s important that contemporary art isn’t reserved for cities, and that there is space for a forward-thinking arts venue in new and unexpected places.
Laura Porter (b. 1991) is a sculpture and installation artist who, after studying art at Middlesex University in London, moved to North Devon. She has exhibited across the country, including Collyer Bristol in London, the Broomhill National Sculpture Prize in Devon, Left Bank Leeds, and Sunny Bank Mills. In the autumn of 2020, she set up Studio KIND. arts space in Braunton, with local artist Richard Gregory. She has also managed the Art Box project for The Burton Art Gallery, and is a trustee of The Plough Arts Centre.
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